Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
We see our families and our communities all over this country coming apart.
And we feel the common ground shifting from under us. The PTA, the town
hall meeting, the ball park--it's hard for a lot of overworked parents to
find the time and space for those things that strengthen the bonds of trust
and cooperation.
Too many of our children don't even have parents and grandparents who can
give them those experiences that they need to build their own character and
their sense of identity. We all know that while we here in this chamber can
make a difference on those things, that the real differences will be made
by our fellow citizens where they work and where they live.
And it'll be made almost without regard to party. When I used to go to the
softball park in Little Rock to watch my daughter's league and people would
come up to me--fathers and mothers--and talk to me, I can honestly say I
had no idea whether 90 percent of them were Republicans or Democrats.
When I visited the relief centers after the floods in California, Northern
California, last week, a woman came up to me and did something that very
few of you would do. She hugged me and said, "Mr. President, I'm a
Republican, but I'm glad you're here."
Now, why? We can't wait for disasters to act the way we used to act every
day. Because as we move into this next century, everybody matters. We don't
have a person to waste. And a lot of people are losing a lot of chances to
do better.
That means that we need a New Covenant for everybody--for our corporate
and business leaders, we're going to work here to keep bringing the deficit
down, to expand markets, to support their success in every possible way.
But they have an obligation: when they're doing well, to keep jobs in our
communities and give their workers a fair share of the prosperity they
generate.
For people in the entertainment industry in this country, we applaud your
creativity and your worldwide success and we support your freedom of
expression but you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of your
work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant,
repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our
media all the time.
We've got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of organizations to
help us stop our most serious social problem: the epidemic of teen
pregnancies and births where there is no marriage. I have sent to Congress
a plan to target schools all over this country with anti-pregnancy programs
that work. But government can only do so much. Tonight, I call on parents
and leaders all across this country to join together in a national campaign
against teen pregnancy to make a difference. We can do this and we must.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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